Prairie Gopher 
Length. 10 inches. 
Description. Dark, pinkish-brown, inclining to chestnut in some 
specimens, but with no fulvous tints. Darker on the middle of 
the back; under surface slightly lighter, but not distinctly so 
as in the Georgia gopher; hair on the feet white; tail hairy, 
but scantily so toward the tip; hair of basal half brown, 
terminal half white. 
Range. Mississippi Valley, from North Dakota to eastern Kansas 
and southern Missouri and including southern Wisconsin and 
most of Illinois. 
The general appearance and habits of this animal are similar 
to those of the preceding species. Farther South and West are 
several other gophers, while from the Plains to the Pacific are 
found the gray gopher and its allies with ungrooved front teeth, 
but otherwise much like the animals above described. 
POCKET MICE 
(Family Heteromyide) 
These mice are restricted to the western United States and 
Mexico and are confined largely to the arid regions, so charac- 
teristic of that portion of the country. They comprise two very 
different groups of animals—the true pocket mice, little mouse- 
like creatures with rather coarse hair, and the larger kangaroo 
rats, with immense hind legs and long brushy-tipped tails, re- 
calling the jerboas of the Old World. 
Although so different in external appearance, these pocket 
mice are allied to the mole-like gophers that we have just been 
considering, and it will be seen at once upon examining them 
that they possess the sarne curious external check pouches. We 
have three modifications of the same type of animal just as we 
find in the true mice; the gopher corresponding to the meadow 
mouse, the pocket mouse to the deer mouse and the kangaroo rat 
to the jumping mouse. The first is adapted for a burrowing life, 
the second for a life on the surface of the ground and the third 
specially modified for leaping. 
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